Everything, including the ball, rolled in slow motion. Joel Campbell, the Costa Rican striker, had all but walked to the edge of the Greek box, before finding an uninterrupted pass back to the man jogging up the left wing, Christian Bolanos. With a single touch, Bolanos sought out his centrally-located captain, the slick-haired Bryan Ruiz.

Unmarked in enemy territory with four near-stationary Greece defenders ahead, Ruiz had enough time and space to choose just how he wished to find the back of the net.

His options were, a) dribble past the yawning defence and tap the ball in. Or, b) go for broke with a long-ranger. Ruiz weighed in his mind and scuffed up an improbable third, c), a cross between the first two choices — a tap in from 15 yards away.

When he finally brought down the hammer, Ruiz’s boot missed clipping the ball altogether. But the back of his shin didn’t. And then began the death-roll, the Brazuca gliding ever-so-gently past a wrong-footed Ioannis Maniatis, before teasing its way besides a leaden-legged Vasileios Torosidis.

Finally, in what seemed like an eternity, it sneaked past Greece goalie Orestis Karnezis as well.

Any slower, and the ball would’ve come to a grinding halt. Quite like the game itself.

The fans at the Arena Pernambuco weren’t happy. Not just because they had booked their tickets months in advance hoping to watch a Round of 16 match involving either Italy, England or Uruguay; but also due to the fact that the underdog flavour of this World Cup, Costa Rica, were far from their effervescent, bursting-with-energy selves. The Ruiz goal was the Central American side’s first ‘shot’ on target.

And that came in the 52nd minute of a dull, dull game.

Goal-shy Greeks

But the Costa Ricans had little to do with asphyxiating the contest. Not when ‘asphyxia’ is a Greek word in the first place; a most apt term to describe their strategy on the football field. Since the beginning of time (which, for long periods, this match felt like) Greece have believed in choking out their opposition before scoring a solitary goal on the counter. Precisely how they won Euro 2004, by netting the least number of goals ever to win a major championship. Consider this.

In all their World Cups put together, Greece had only scored goals in two matches before today — the first occasion was against Nigeria at Bloemfontein in 2010. And far more recently, against Ivory Coast in injury time of their final group game (a penalty no less) to make it thus far in the first place. It made someone tweet: “One day Greece will win a tournament without scoring a single goal.”

With the ageing Georgios Karagounis’s side still refusing to throw men upfront, Costa Rica only had to ensure that they did nothing stupid over the next 40 or so minutes to proceed to the quarters. But just 14 minutes later, stupidity had occurred in the form of a needless, studs-up tackle by the side’s one-man backline, Oscar Duarte. Duarte was shown his second yellow of the evening, reducing Costa Rica to 10 men. And even Greece couldn’t not take advantage of that.

As Costa Rica ran down an already run-down clock, moving time in frames, Greece brought on Theofanis Gekas, their 35-year old balding striker.

Bundle of chances

He wheeled ahead with Karagounis, Georgios Samaras and Konstantinos Mitroglou. Between the four of them, they had a bundle of chances. But in front of goal, Gekas blundered most of them (on one occasion, a rolling pass crashed against his unaware feet in a one-on-one position). And it was of one such blunder in ‘Greece time’ that the equaliser was scored.

Late strike

In the 92nd minute, with just seconds left on the clock, Gekas shanked his umpteenth attempt at goal.

Only this time, Costan Rica’s inspirational goalie Keylor Navas couldn’t hang on to the save. He punched it out back into the box, where the incredibly named Sokratis Papastathopoulos lurked.

Here was a Greek defender in the opposition’s defence. During such rare occurrences, extraordinary things tend to happen. Greece had scored the second goal of their campaign.

“Can we just skip straight to the penalty shoot-out?” former England striker Gary Lineker pleaded before extra-time on Twitter. They should’ve just listened to him, for nothing apart from yet another Gekas miss occurred over the next thirty minutes. And only for Gekas, nothing happened during the following penalty shoot-outs as well. It was enough to seal Greece’s snoozing fate. A revealing stat tells you that the last eight penalty shoot-outs in World Cups have been won by the team going first.

Greece traded that position for conducting the penalties at the end where their supporters stood in large numbers.

Those fans were largely silent as Costa Rica slotted in each of their five penalties, the fifth arriving immediately after Greece missed their fourth when Gekas was on the ball.

As the Greeks mourned on their knees, time crawled back to life.